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Thursday, November 8, 2007

Good Grammar Guides

Remember those grammar and style and word usage reference guides that you learned about way back in school? The ones that gave you all the "rules" and made your writing appropriately formal and pedantic -- IF you happened to be writing a school term paper, or for a solemn professional journal or such. A lot of the old standard writing guides are out of date (yes, our language does change) or just not as applicable for informal fiction writing. But not to despair of having someplace to look up those thorny punctuation or verb tense problems, or figure out which word you really mean! There are lots of modern and FUN guides available now.

3. The Well-Tempered Sentence (A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed) – Karen Elizabeth Gordon

4. Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English – Patricia T. O’Conner

5. Dictionary of Problem Words and Expressions – Harry Shaw

6. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation – Lynne Truss(And for extra fun, get the children's picture book version by Truss, illustrated by Bonnie Timmons, and "Eats, Shites & Leaves: Crap English and How to Use It" by A. Parody.)

12. The World of Language series of children's books by Ruth Heller. Yes, children's books, but clear and concise -- and beautifully illustrated. Merry-Go-Round (nouns), A Cache of Jewels (collective nouns), Kites Sail High (verbs), Many Luscious Lollipops (adjectives), Up, Up and Away (adverbs), Behind the Mask (prepositions) and more.

13. Chicago Manual of Style - "The" style guide for many. Be sure you use a current edition, many things have been updated over the years.

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We're the Ellora's Cave crew, bringing you wit and wisdom from the Romantica trenches. Since 2000 we've lovingly tended a torrid love affair with ebooks, tempting readers with erotica of all sub-genres. Like a fine wine, we've gotten better with age - and our loyal readers and hot-on-hot authors continue to make EC the definitive word in erotic romance.